I do not know what to call this......fear?

[Margm]

I am to pick up the cremains tomorrow.  Why am I terrified?

[kayc]

I cried all the way in (it was 65 miles away) and I had my sister drive me.  Why wouldn't you feel that way?  This is a permanent reminder, it makes it seem so real...if you had any doubts beforehand, they're squelched now.  You will be in our thoughts tomorrow.

[MartyT]

Margaret, my dear, your question about fear reminds me of the now famous words of C. S. Lewis, writing about his reactions to the death of his beloved wife, Joy, in A Grief Observed:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me . . . An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m afraid of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t . . . And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness . . .

[iPraiseHim]

It was surreal for me, too. It was another step, (place marker on my grief journey) in my realization that my precious wife passed and is no longer here. Every thing just takes time. and we just don't want time to move forward.  We want to pause stop the clock and the world while we catch our breath and try to comprehend all of this. I have two funny stories, ( funny to me) that help me deal with the situation.  It was my way of dealing with it.   I will reserve comments for now as I really do not want to offend or hurt others accidentally or inadvertently.  I'll be praying for comfort and peace for you, Margaret.  Shalom

[Margm]

Okay, picked up the cremains.  Talked to him all the way home.  My son brought it out to the truck.  I fixed a place in the entrance hall for Billy and his brother Lonnie.  It was not so bad.  I have to remember, when we talked about this I was really expecting I would be the first to go, and I felt comfort about still being with him.  I will take that comfort now for him.  Some people would not do it this way.  My girlfriend takes her husband's urn with her to all the family gatherings.  Made perfect sense.  She talks to him still and it has been 17 years.  We go with what feels best for us.  I am okay now.  No, that is a lie, I will never be okay, but I sure am going to try to live because that is what Billy said, the one left should live.  Had a flu shot today, so I guess I have the 24 hour flu, very tired, going to bed.  Stuff to do tomorrow before the post office closes.  They stay open till 11:00 a.m.  Very small town.  I remember what my mama always said "peace that passes all understanding."  That is all we can hope for.

[kayc]

That verse is one I repeat often, usually in the middle of the night when anxiety hits.

I'm glad it went well and you have him home with you. We'd rather they be with us as before, but I found a degree of comfort in bringing my husband's ashes home.

[debi.williams]

The only one that helps me, is also one mom taught me which is 'Be still and know that I am God' it is particularly powerful in the wee small hours of the morning I find.

[Margm]

Debi, I know it is disrespectful to speak ill of your parents.  My mom had a few distinct peculiarities, some were good, some were fearsome.  For one thing, she had a memory that could quote all the things she learned in school.  She and I both are "back of the book" readers.  If I don't like how the book turns out, I won't read anymore.  If it is good, I read the whole book. (I have not figured out how to do that on Kindle, so I suffer through the whole thing).  That is one thing I want back, my concentration so I can read.  We belong to the Amazon "read all you want" club because Billy read 3-4 books a month.  But one thing my mama was/is, is a Christian who knew her Bible.  She had a tongue that could cut anyone's throat, and used it.  She and her brother picked up "shorts" on the church yard, so she smoked from before grade school.  She is 94 now, and still smokes.  She has Alzheimer's, and cannot use her legs, which is good, because she would walk somewhere and get lost.  My dad was a deacon.  Mama thought some of the women of our church, who came without their husbands, but were faithful Christians, she thought they should be deacon's also.  Daddy said women could not be deacons.  Mama found it in the Bible where they could.  Daddy could never win an argument so he put his hands in his pockets and would walk off whistling.  I cannot go and talk to Mama now.  Really, never could.  But, Mama has left me with lots of verses and passages in the Bible to live by.  My parents never were close like Billy and I were.  Neither were Billy's parents.  His parents never said "I love you."  Not even to the kids.  The grandkids, they did.  Times were so different for "The Greatest Generation."  Billy said "I love you" all the time.  That is something we all need to say, because especially right now, we all need the love we have lost.  So, I love you, all of you, and my heart is with you all.

I found out I did not need to go to a shrink.  Our grief is a normal thing that is not a mental condition, though it sure feels like it.  I need help sleeping and I need help with accepting what I have to accept.  I do not look forward to this life without Billy, but I will have to accept it.  Not sure how to do that.  I am very fearful, prone to anxiety, but I have my son here, I have my friends, and I have my kindred spirits on this forum who belong to a club none of us wanted to join.  Another thing Mama quoted "Be still."  Hard to do.  And Debi, I think my "be still" is what your mother taught you too.

Edited October 31, 2015 by Margaret Mims
Addendum

[Guest]

Margaret -

If it is good, I read the whole book. (I have not figured out how to do that on Kindle, so I suffer through the whole thing).  That is one thing I want back, my concentration so I can read.

I also had the same problem with concentration and still do.  I have developed an intolerance to TV finding most shows moronic but it is most likely my ability to focus.  I'm also an avid reader going through most books in a couple of days but then found I couldn't concentrate.  My solution was to go back an reread books I'm familiar with; generally mindless books that I enjoy.  I read a lot of young adult when I want a simple quick read so now I've reread Harry Potter series, Hunger Games series, Divergent series and also going back and rereading Classics; Dickens being my favorite, but all books I know the story. I find it to be a good distraction plus when my mind frequently wanders I don't need to reread any pages as I know what I missed.

 

[kayc]

I could not watch t.v. for the first year.  It's taken me years to be able to read a book and even then I don't read as much as I used to.  Focus is really hard to get back.  I think it takes practice.  Think about it, it's like a jolt to the brain...in the loss of child section I just mentioned trauma to the soul.  Something like that is not easy to heal, and necessitates the help of a grief counselor...a good one.

 

[Margm]

Billy waited for the Longmier (sp?) episodes to come to Netflix.  His favorite show.  He loved Chicago PD and Chicago Fire.  While he was sick, he slept.  He slept the whole six weeks he was ill, mostly always without anything to make him sleep.  They had found an aneurysm on the back of his brain, but felt it had been there for awhile.  He got to where he could not walk in those fast six weeks.  I got angry because I thought he was not fighting.  How I wish I had not got angry.  I was so frustrated.  He had pulled me through a long drawn out cancer fight when I was 39 and 40 and then last year a colon rupture with overall body sepsis.  He pulled me through them.  I wanted another miracle.  I wanted to save him but nothing I could do helped.  He could not/would not eat or drink.  We took him for saline boluses twice, actually in the hospital for the third when he gave up, or his body gave up on him.  I wanted to fight this.  I couldn't.  I am having the regrets stage of grief, not anger at him.  I wish my last emotion toward him had not been frustration.  He knew how much I loved him.  I watch Longmier now, without him.  It is an empty show.  But, I don't shake my head "no" often anymore.  I miss him so much.  In the end, I know I have to help myself.  My friends want me to come out and have dinner with them.  I am frozen though.  My sister wants me to come for Thanksgiving.  How can I leave the house.  I know I have to though.  I know we all go through this.  I will collect myself.  I will hit those stages of grief, all except anger.  All I can be angry at is cancer, and that is something no one can really help.  Strides have been made.  Good night.  

[kevin]

I like Billy!!!......Those are all my favorite shows, felt bad when Longmire got cancelled.........I still tune into the "Young and Restless" , Angela watched that for 25 years +....My grand daughter watches it now.......I did a Family dinner last week, as long as we didn't talk about me everything was great......We all have regrets, otherwise it wouldn't be part of the Process...just don't be too hard on yourself.....Sounds like you were the motivator, you believed if you could beat it, he definitely had a good chance also.......none of us are anywhere close to perfect

[Margm]

Thank you Kevin.  Billy was a man's man.  I cannot tell you how many times we watched Gunsmoke.  I guess it was his favorite because it was his dad's favorite.  My son is an artist.  Billy grew up in the small town of Sibley, Louisiana.  Eight in his graduating class.  Back in a time when they all lived in relative poverty, but none of us knew we had poverty.  I lived at the northern part of that Webster Parish.  My mom had her Victory Gardens.  She grew up in a time where you canned everything so we all never went hungry.  Neither did Billy's family.  We may not have had steak, but after we were first married we had many a meal of pinto beans and cornbread and tea.  Cannot beat that.  The kids had no where to go so they  would sit on the bridge over the RR track.  One time before TV, and I doubt if Billy's family read the newspaper much, unless it was a school lesson and other than KWKH, our country radio station, he was cut off from lots of things.  No means of transportation.  Country store in the little town.  The boys would get together on Saturday and Friday and sit on the bridge across the RR track, all congregate together.  The main road through Louisiana passed through the town, before interstate highways.  They still missed Sibley even then.  One day a blimp came down the RR track, flying just above it.  A big gray one.  To an 8-9 year old boy it was a bomb and they were all dead.  I loved that story.  I loved the simple life we all came from.  I made small plans to go back where we first began.  My son wants to paint the group of boys in their 1956 clothes, hair, cigarettes, Converse shoes, jeans rolled up one time.  He also will paint Billy and his best friend hitchhiking to the town where they played American Legion baseball.  Baseball was always part of his life and in later years he was a wonderful coach for football and baseball/softball for our kids for the YMCA.  He let all the kids play and they won over and over. The parents loved him.  So did/do I.  I look forward to my son painting the pictures.  He is a good artist and will do the late 1950s justice.

Edited November 1, 2015 by Margaret Mims
double sentence

[KarenK]

Margaret,

Billy and Ron would have been fast friends. He was also raised in poverty in the back hilIs of West Virginia, the son of a coal miner. His father was very strict, a minister of the Primitive Baptist Church(the No-Hellers). He was worked to death and beaten a lot while growing up and left home at sixteen. He was a self made man. His parents' ways were very foreign to me .In our house, "Westerns" ruled. John Wayne was his favorite. We had a ton of memorabilia, including all the DVD's, most of which I have had to sell.

I have a fear, unfounded I know, that he will return someday and be so mad at me because all of his things are gone. He was so very proud of his guns and all of his collections and loved our little cabin. It is all gone now. Somehow I had to survive. I don't think he would understand. This just eats at me and I can't sleep because my heart pounds so and my brain can't shut these thoughts off. I take sleeping pills which make me a zombie the next day.

Ron was not cremated. He lies in a plot next to my parents. My son and I finally went to see the headstone which was placed a few months ago. I do not visit the cemetery often. I just can't. Even after 2+ years, it is just not real to me. I just want back that 25 year old with the devilish smile that I met at a stoplight so many years ago. It is not to be.

[kevin]

 Margaret, you have a way with words that actually paint a picture........What you are describing is something out of Americana / Norman Rockwell and it brings back so many memories. My parents didn't get a TV till about 59 and we had one channel.....for the next 7 years. We were rural also, amount 20 farms, and we all met at  the field(by the General Store/post office) to play ball every evening......Those are such good memories........I hope your son will capture your words on canvas....

[Margm]

Thanks Kevin.  I only have words.  My son has the steady hand of an artist.  My hands shake with a congenital tremor and I sure have had trouble signing my name to all these things we have to fill out.  My grandmother wrote a book for her grandkids and my friends appreciate me writing about the "old days" on Facebook.  I do not know how to take pictures for the computer, that was Billy's joy.  He had just bought a new camera and a 300 lens.  My daughter took it.  He never really got to use it.  But to Billy, the joy was in the shopping and he stayed on Amazon and everywhere picking out just the right one.  He loved for that old brown truck to bring him presents.  I just found his 1956-57 school picture and rather than hurt me, it made me smile.  Maybe there is hope for all of us.......at least for moments at a time. @Karen: Your husband would have wanted you  taken care of.  We have enough guilt, regrets, all part of this grieving process.  I have to shut my mind off seeing Billy that last time..  I should have been holding him, but he knew how much he was loved, and I know Ron felt the same for you.  I have to feel all our other halves have to want the best for us.  I just know it.

[kayc]

Margaret, sounds like your son is quite the artist if he can paint all that!  I'l love to see a picture of something he's done.

Sounds like your starting out years were similar to mine...I made a pact with God when my kids were little, if he'd provide it, I'd cook it and we'd eat it.    I canned elk, deer, green beans, jams and jellies, spaghetti sauce made from tomatoes that came from a truck wreck, squash for pies, you name it.  And my kids never went hungry. 

[Margm]

Kay, my Billy liked to give the kids nicknames.  He called Scott by the name of the little boy in The Yearling, something like Faderwing.  So, that was his artist name for years.  I think he had more paintings stolen than he sold, but they do not call them starving artists for nothing.  He got into some "trouble" and was shot in the leg when he was grown, and Faderwing had a bad leg in "The Yearling."  Billy called our daughter "Darling Jill" from Gods Little Acre.  I won't even try to explain that.  He showed his paintings a lot of places and then he has had artist's block for a number of years.  It goes along with bipolar, but so does artistic abilities.  He is really good.  Of course, I am bragging.  He used to have a site to go  to, but I think it has been taken down when he went into his blue funk a few years ago.  

I might blanch something and freeze it , but you have a lot more knowledge than I do.  I was afraid I would kill us all if I canned.  Mama never did though.  I admire you for that.  Mama kept 3 meals on the table a day.  Might be leftovers for supper, but that was okay.  She would cover the table from dinner with a table cloth.  We never got sick.  

Only one breakdown today.  Guess I will make up for it tomorrow.  (i think sometimes I give too much information, I'm sorry).

 

[kayc]

Only one breakdown at this far out is VERY good!  You learn to take the good days with the bad days.  It's a rollercoaster ride for sure.

I've been home, sick, for ten days.  Today I have to go in and do the "hard day" of the month (as Treasurer), download the bank statements, do the reconciliations, and the reports, there's about 13 in all.  We use an old home version of Quicken and it doesn't have a payroll module, it was set up in a cumbersome way so everything is like scratching and clawing to do.  Will be glad when this day is done.

[Margm]

Good luck kayc.  As a medical transcriptionist at a teaching hospital, I would drag my feet at each new computer program.  I soon learned you can teach an old dog new tricks if they put it in 1, 2, 3 form.  Like #1 was "turn computer on."  They arranged the new teaching schedules just for me along with each new program.  Then after 43 years they took away transcription and made me an editor.  That meant I cleaned up the "crap" put out by voice recognition.  One time when the doctor said "parenthesis" around a word the computer printed out "bull flatus."  That was when this editor became retired from cleaning up this stuff for good.  I don't miss editing, but I miss the good clean transcription.  

[kayc]

I used to work for a doctor's office...it's a rural area and he did everything from surgery to delivering babies, unlike your regular doctor's offices today where you go here for this and there for that.  I did medical transcription and I hated it.  Sometimes you couldn't understand a word no matter how many times you listened to it because it sounded like bleep!  That was typewriter days, and you'd have several carbon copies, which you could never get lined up right again if you took it out of the typewriter.  Invariably the doctor would be in with a patient for 1/2 hour and you couldn't afford to twiddle your thumbs that long, and being unable to ask him a question, you'd leave a blank space to fill in later.  When you'd get the word, you'd have to try and put a 19 letter word in a 12 letter space without messing up the carbon copies...or you could fill in each carbon copy separately, one at a time.  Nope, don't miss that!

Voice recognition makes you WANT to retire!  It's a art to learn how to SPEAK into them and try as we might, we're human,not robots.  You had a hard job!  bull flatus, that's funny!

[Margm]

I worked at a teaching hospital.  When they brought in the doctors with English as a 2nd language (actually, some never learned it even as a 2nd), it really got hard.  I began it in the days with belts, IBM Selectric, different colors of "white out" for each copy and invariably some doc that would tell me to go up and add another paragraph between first and second, which was impossible.  One doctor from Iraq, (transplant surgeon) would dictate so terrible, three pages usually, I had to know anatomy to just know where he was operating so I could get some words right.  Glad to be retired.  Billy and I both retired on the same day. (I hated retirement and went back to work at a Catholic hospital and then a Presbyterian one.  I got to work at home, so we were together those 18 years all the time.  He had 18  years of retirement and lost many coworkers and friends during those 18 years.  I wonder if they are all reminiscing now.

[kevin]

Retirement is great, because you have the option to work if you want to....with absolutely no stress, and not too many silly meetings or politics. Part of our discussions with old co-workers usually starts with recent losses, and there is always one or two. I do counsel younger people that keeping yourself fit before retirement is very important....as an example...you will be Golfing 4X a week compared to two days, you will be on the go the rest of the time.....as a couple.....you burn a lot more calories. It is good, but be ready for it so it is not a shock.......But Angela and I loved the life style....... 

[Margm]

We did too Kevin.  I had a new reel and rod just before he got sick.  We were looking forward to trying it  out.  I don't want to even use it now.  Maybe later.  Billy was one to keep in shape, and that is ironic.  In August he was riding the elliptical 30 minutes at a time.  Then he was down, totally down for six weeks.  Lots of regrets.  We had no sign, other than backache he had had for years with slipped disks.  But, they allowed him to ride a bicycle and elliptical with no pain.  Walking long ways, that was always a pain.  Because of the pinched nerve, 30 years ago his one leg would just give out.  Because of the trauma of a hemorrhoid operation by a country doctor and the results thereafter when he was 24, he went for one colonoscopy before they started sedating.  He would not go for another.  There are so many if, if, if, if.............

[kayc]

Made it through the day, all my reports came out to the penny, got everything done, in spite of all of the interruptions.  Feeling pretty good about it, ready to go walk my dog and then settle in with a good book.  

I agree with you both, retirement is great.  Some like it, some don't, but I think you have to strike a balance and keep active/busy.  The good part is, no more putting up with bad bosses, no more alarm clocks, no more getting up at 3 am to shovel snow out of the driveway to commute 100 miles a day.